How Many Calories Should You Eat?

That is actually great advice, i never thought of testing my maintenance calories this way. But i think for most women the time period would likely need to be longer cause hormones and our cycle would really mess with those results. Three weeks into your cycle you would definitely weigh more than the beginning regardless of what you eat. Tracking for 4 weeks or even 5 would be best. Sooo yeah way more time.

Wtf I weigh 258 and if eat more than 2500 calories I gain fat.

I’m 215, down from 245. I cut my calories to 2100 and am losing fast while running and working out. I will go back to 3000 when I hit 200.

Hey Dr. Mike. I am 44 years old.
230 lbs eating 1950 to 2100 calories per day and I don’t lose weight. Doing between 12k to 15k steps daily, work out 4 to 5 times per week. T3, t4 tsh checked, testosterone ok. Do you have any advice????? Thank you.

One of the rare channels I watch on normal speed. Listening to Dr. Mike is therapeutic!

My metabolism must be crazy then because my maintenance is around 3000 and i weigh a little under 150. I do get 15k+ steps multiple times a week from my job thougj

Wdym by that formula ? If I consistently eat 2700cal ( as a 84kg ) I would gain a lot of fat

I want to play with polar bears! lol

The body fat is in the equation?

If you want a more precise initial number and don't mind a bit more complication, just use an online TDEE calculator, especially one that adjusts for waist circumference and/or body fat %. The random first hit I got on a search gave me a number within 100 cal of my actual tested maintenance needs, which I think is pretty good.

So is there a different formula for protein, carbs, fat, etc?

you cant just multiply your bodyweight x 15 and thats your calories as what if both me and another person same gender same age weighed the same but im a bodybuilder and i exercise like an elite athlete everyday but the other sits on their arse. how would we need to eat the same lol

will this information be relatively the same and still apply to women?

I put in 340X15 and man it said 5,100 calories 💀

Bodyweight as in, lean bodyweight..? Or at any given bodyfat?

Love this content and love learning, after years of bodybuilding I got pretty ill and realised there was more to life than calories and gym and now do what I want and live like tomorrow might be my last. But will still always be interested in these videos. 👍🏼

Should I eat back calories I burn on a cardio day to maintain a pre-calculated deficit?

Does the app make calorie adjustments by itself as you progress on the diet?

I eat about a gram of uranium per day.

In what cases would that formula not work? I am 6`5 at 210-211 and for the past 2 weeks I`ve been between 800-1400 calories a day (depending on if I have a couple of coffees or none at all as I take them with cream and sugar and went crazy with a can of red-bull for NYE 😅). Pretty sedentary tbh only doing some knee rehab work 3 times a week and still my weigh has not moved by more than 1.5 (up or down) which I would attribute to water. Plus I am in intermittent 18:6 (only eating/drinking calories in a 6 hour window in the afternoon). Not really looking to gain or loose weight at the moment but wondering would that indicate any hormonal issue or some type of a weird genetic predisposition as I`ve been trying to figure out my maintenance. Appreciate any reasonable input!

My body weight in pounds is 200. That means i need 3000 calories per day to maintain. Yet i am eating 1800 - 2000 per day and my weight never changes 😂

The topic about calories is always super confusing to me in a sense, that those estimated values dont work for me in a way that I can understand. From a first estimation (like bodyweight in lb times 15) I would need roughly 2700 kcal. From some state funded health websites the estimation of 2700 kcal is also pretty close. But if I eat 2700 kcal despite training I get fat over time, but if I stay between 2000 to 2400 I my weight remains roughly the same, but training results stagnate hard. I know about about "bulking" and "cutting", but my gain in fat compared to my gain in muscle is a bad ratio

Its so hard to ear that many calories, I'm actually scared.

I'm trying to fiqure out my loosing weight calories im 166 pounds do weight training for 20 30 minites 5 days a week, i was on 1450 calories for a month but its just been the same . My maintence is 2490 so I'm not sure why my body scale has stayed the same ,

7 days a week 7 days a week

It’s important to incorporate your activity level too. I’m 168 lbs. and lift 3 to 4 times per week. Also get 10,000 to 12,000 steps in per day. I estimate my BMR to be 2800. However I’m cutting for a BB show, so I’m only eating 2000 calories a day. Trying to lose 1.5 lbs. per week.

Does this apply for woman to? The x15?

If only Dr. Mike could tell us how to find the optimal life partner.

for the polar bears!

Dear Dr. Mike,

What do you have to say about how many more calories your body burns when you eat in a surplus though? Perhaps eating 3300 would suffice, but you eat 3600 and since you have so much extra energy you subconsciously burn 600, so you would have been better off eating 3300?

“How many calories should you eat? I don’t know, end video.” Right there the screen should’ve just gone black for the remaining 7 minutes and 42 seconds. 😂

No way my cutting calories is 3070. I weigh 238 currently and x 15 = 3570.......I have gained 10lbs of muscle this last year and havent lost any fat. Am I missing something?

I know, that you all say that it is impossible, but i have to tell my story.
I was very overweight, 240lbs, 5’10 tall!
I ate tons of unhealthy food and drank 2-2,5 liters of cola, fanta, iced tea every day!
Then i started to go to the gym and eat healthier, stopped the drinking of soda and went down to 163lbs in less than a year! Was very happy and felt good! 👍🏼
Then i stopped with training for a long time but since then i learned to eat a lot less and healthier then i did before my weight loss journey, so no yo-yo effect or not much! Was about 182lbs year around, so a little bit overweight but really not much. I looked normal and not fat.
Then I started to work out again, eating really healthy with weighing my food and counting all calories of eating and drinking!

I wanted to go down to about 154lbs which then would result to i think around 15% bodyfat, which would be great to gain relatively „lean“ body mass!
I train with really high intensity (until failure or beyond)!
So i tried to went on a calorie deficit for about 4 months! But as my weight don’t went down, i ate less calories… still nothing changed… then i went even further down… nothing changed and so on! I was down to 1400-1500 calories at the end and still weighed 182lbs!
Okay, then i thought: „if that don’t go the way i want, then i eat more!“
But i don’t wanted to gain much „fat“ so i started with not that much calories but my weight don’t went up! So i ate more and more and more! I went up to about 3000 calories for a few months, i still weigh 182lbs! 🤷🏽‍♂️ it’s like my body say: „this is your weight, not more and not less and it’s irrelevant what you are doing or eating!“ 🙃

So please explain me, what are my „maintain“ calories?? 🤔 1400?? Or 3000?? Because it simply doesn’t matter how much i eat, i will stay at 182lbs! 💀🤣
I mean, my form is getting better visually, but it’s extremely annoying! And normally a recomposition shouldn’t be possible with the calories i eat and near 1 year of consistent training?!
And explain me, why it was that simple to go down to 163lbs with worse training and worse dieting 5 years ago and now nothing works?! 🤷🏽‍♂️

I know that you will say that this isn’t possible, but it is the truth!…

Edit: i am 5‘10… not 5‘7 like i wrote… i am from germany, had calculated it false! 😬 So 179cm is my height!

Thank you

Is this equation also valid for women?

Dr Mike more like Dr Bike because I want to ride him

I’m a 5’11” manlet at 359lbs. How does this formula work for morbidly obese people like myself?

Your weight can also vary quickly depending on carbs and water and sodium

Yo just go on google and type in tdee calculator. Very quick fairly accurate way to figure out your calories.

Lmao. I missed the mark of my maintenance by almost a 1000 calories. Calculation brought me to over 3000 while I'm currently eating easily at about 2000 that I thought was reduced from 2500 in an effort to lose weight.I can really be a lot more relaxed about my food situation it seems

That intro was great.

@Renaissance Periodization

Ok. slightly overweight (maybe a bit more). I need to take off between 60-80 pounds. From what i'm gathering, i'm suppossed to eat 3900 Calories a day? 260X15, for maintenance? For the love of God say it ain't so?

(I think it was this video that affirmed that figure. I'm watching 2-3 this AM trying to find a method to the madness.............)

there can't be a formula. there are way too many variables. just do trial and error for 8-12 weeks. after 2-3 years you know exactly how much you need.

Haha. It is great how straight forward Mike is.

I try to keep my calorie intake to high protein foods lean foods. Like i might eat a tuna pack thats 16g of protein in not much food but also has 260 calories maybe two, and then will eat something like a protein bowl at dinner that is 21g of protein and around 310 calories. And then outside of that ill try to eat thibgs that are low in calorie and high in protein that as i go throughout my day. Trying to keep my intake placed after anything physical so that rather than stored caloric intake im ensuring that i use majority of what im taking in. However my maintenance works out to be 2775 calories a day and despite staying just below that 5 days out of the week i cant manage to cut that last 5-6% of body fat the army says i need to cut. I'm 185lbs at 5'9.5" with an overall lean build but they say i am between 23 and 25 percent body fat and need to be around 18% in my weight class to be considered "non-obease"

WHAAAA? I'm eating about 1500 to lose +/- .75lbs per week. I've never tracked maintenance and can't IMAGINE eating 2000-2400 calories every day! That sounds AMAZING. 🤓

To throw a Frisbee like Dr.Mike is my new goal 🦍

One problem with that: within a 3 day period, my weight will fluctuate by up to 1.5kg without any adjustment to calory intake. Even when I am heavily cutting, I can "gain" that much just by the amount of food and water that is or isn't in the digestive tract. This kind of micro step measurement doesn't work.

What about for us ladies who weight more every two weeks (ovulation/period)? Should it be a net loss over the same time every month?